Wheelchair store steered patients to make profits, ex-employee says

Updated 10:12 pm, Thursday, March 21, 2013

SAN ANTONIO — The Scooter Store used a coding system to tag doctors across the country for their willingness or reluctance to prescribe patients power wheelchairs, according to two ex-employees.

The coding system allowed Scooter Store representatives to steer potential customers to doctors with a track record of prescribing power-mobility devices if the patients' own physicians wouldn't write the prescriptions.

Layoff was the trigger

The system was revealed in a just released e-book by Theresa M. Jones, 24, a four-year Scooter Store employee who was among the approximately 1,500 workers permanently laid off this week.

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A company database displayed a colored dot next to doctors' names.

"Green signified we had great success with the doctor," Jones said in an interview. Her e-book is titled "Behind Closed Doors: The Truth About The Scooter Store From a Former Employee."

A red dot indicated the company was unsuccessful working with a doctor to prescribe a chair, Jones said. A gray dot was assigned if it didn't have a history with the doctor.

Another terminated employee, who didn't want to be identified, confirmed the coding system. She said there was "big push" by management to get mobility devices for patients whose primary-care physician and/or medical specialist wouldn't prescribe one.

A Scooter Store representative didn't respond to a request for comment.

"It's absolutely doctor-shopping," Patrick Burns, a spokesman for Taxpayers Against Fraud in Washington, said of The Scooter Scooter's coding system. "It's looking for people who are a soft touch."

Burns added: "When you doctor-shop for drugs, we kind of understand that that's immoral, even if it's not illegal. If you go to a doctor and he writes a prescription that's not medically necessary, that's illegal. Here, it's a little bit squishy as to what the standards are for a (power) wheelchair."

Coding system dropped

The company stopped using the coding system following the Feb. 20 raid on its New Braunfels headquarters, according to Jones and the ex-employee.

Authorities presumably are investigating possible Medicare and Medicaid fraud, though The Scooter Store CEO Martin "Marty" Landon has said the company is not a target of the investigation.

A spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which reimburses suppliers for power-mobility devices sold to Medicare and Medicaid patients, didn't respond to a request for comment.